looks on her and Sacharifa; and the verfes On Love, that begin, Anger in hafty words or blows.

In others he is not equally fuccefsful; fometimes his thoughts are deficient, and fometimes his expreflion.

The numbers are not always mufical; as,

Fair Venus, in thy foft arms

The god of rage confine;

For thy whispers are the charms

Which only can divert his fierce defign. What though he frown, and to tumult do

incline;

Thou the flame

Kindled in his breaft canft tame,'

With that fnow which unmelted lies on thine.

He feldom indeed fetches an amorous fentiment from the depths of fcience; his thoughts are for the moft part easily underftood, and his images fuch as the fuperficies of nature readily fupplies; he has a just claim to popularity, because he writes to common degrees of knowledge, and is free at least from philofophical pedantry, unless perhaps

the end of a fong to the Sun may be excepted, in which he is too much a Copernican. To which may be added, the fimile of the Palm in the verses on her passing through a crowd; and a line in a more ferious poem on the Referation, about vipers and treacle, which can only be understood by those who happen to know the compofition of the Theriaca.

His thoughts are fometimes hyperbolical, and his images unnatural :

The plants admire,

No less than thofe of old did Orpheus' lyre;
If the fit down, with tops all tow'rds her bow'd;
They round about her into arbours crowd:
Or if the walks, in even ranks they stand,
Like some well-marshal'd and obfequious band.

In other place:

While in the park I fing, the liftening deer
Attend my paffion, and forget to fear:
When to the beeches I report my flame,
They bow their heads, as if they felt the fame:
To gods appealing, when I reach their bowers,
With loud complaints they anfwer me in showers.
To thee a wild and cruel foul is given,
More deaf than trees, and prouder than the

: heaven!

On

On the head of a Stag:

O fertile head! which every year
Could fuch a crop of wonder bear !
The teeming earth did never bring
So foon, so hard, so huge a thing:
Which might it never have been caft,
Each year's growth added to the last,
These lofty branches had fupply'd
The Earth's bold fon's prodigious pride:
Heaven with thefe engines had been scal'd,
When mountains heap'd on mountains fail'd.

Sometimes, having fucceeded in the first part, he makes a feeble conclufion. In the fong of "Sachariffa's and Amoret's Friendship," the two laft ftanzas ought to have been omitted.

66

His images of gallantry are not always in the highest degree delicate.

Then fhall my love this doubt difplace,
And gain fuch truft, that I may come

And banquet fometimes on thy face,
But make my conftant meals at hone

Some applications may be thought too remote and unconfequential as in the verses on the Lady dancing:

The fun in figures fuch as thefe, Joys with the moon to play:

To the sweet strains they advance, Which do refult from their own spheres ; As this nymph's dance

Moves with the numbers which the hears.

Sometimes a thought, which might perhaps fill a distich, is expanded and attenuated till it grows weak and almost evanefcent,

Chloris fince firft our calm of peace
Was frighted hence, this good we find,
Your favours with your fears increase,
And growing mischiefs make you kind.
So the fair tree, which still preferyes
Her fruit, and ftate, while no wind blows,
In ftorms from that uprightnefs fwerves;
And the glad earth about her ftrows
With treasure from her yielding boughs.

His images are not always diftinct; as, in the following paffage, he confounds Love as a perfon with love as a paffion:

Some

Some other nymphs, with colours faint,
And pencil flow, may Cupid paint,
And a weak heart in time destroy;
She has a stamp, and prints the Boy:
Can, with a fingle look, inflame
The coldest breast, the rudeft tame.

His fallies of cafual flattery are fometimes elegant and happy, as that in return for the Silver Pen; and fometimes empty and trifling, as that upon the Card torn by the Queen. There are a few lines written in the Dutchess's Taffo, which he is faid by Fenton to have kept a fummer under correction. It happened to Waller, as to others, that his fuccefs was not always in proportion to his labour.

Of these petty compofitions, neither the beauties nor the faults deferve much attention. The amorous verfes have this to recommend them, that they are lefs hyperbolical than those of some other poets. Waller is not always at the laft gafp; he does not die of a frown, nor live upon a fmile. There is however too much love, and too many trifles. Little things are made too important; and the Empire of Beauty is represented as exert